


Scrapes and Bruises

by EvilBecky



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Brothers, Childhood, Comfort, Cute, Gen, injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-26
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:20:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3438464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilBecky/pseuds/EvilBecky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Thor and Loki's childhood. Be prepared for adorable-ness :3</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scrapes and Bruises

The two sons of Odin were at the age when all they needed to do to waste an afternoon, was to run through Asgard. Their small faces were bright with energy as they made their way through the glistening city. They ran through the courtyard, jumping over hedges and running their hands along the walls of the palace. Their laughter filled the empty halls and echoed off the golden buildings. They made sport of tagging each other and running to keep from being tagged in return. When they were bored of this, they chased after birds that landed in the grass, sending them back into the air. They hid from each other, giggling so loud that they easily gave up their position before dashing away to find another game to entertain themselves. 

After a while, Loki began to slow. He could feel his legs strain and his lungs began to burn from the effort. He tried desperately to keep up with his bigger, stronger brother but he seemed just to keep falling farther and farther behind until he lost track of him behind a pillar. He leaned against it, putting his forehead to the cool metal. He tried to slow his breathing, clutching at a stitch at his side. After a few moments of reprieve he still had yet to regain his breath and Thor had noticed his brother was no longer behind him. He backtracked and found him at his pillar. Smiling, he patted Loki on the back and laughed.

“Don’t tell me you are tired already!”

“I’m sorry…” Loki said breathlessly. “I just…don’t have your stamina…”

“Come now!” Thor said loudly. “The day is not even half over! We still have all this time to play! Unless you would rather we sit in the dusty library.” 

Loki looked up at his smiling face and tried to shake off his fatigue. “Of course not…I can still run. Look!”

He stood up straight and put his hands on his hips, standing tall and smiling, his breath coming in and out hard through his teeth. This seemed to satisfy Thor and he smiled back, unaware of his brother’s discomfort.

“Good! Because I have just come up with a new game!”

Loki felt his heart sink. He really did want to go and sit down somewhere. But the look in Thor’s eyes told him that was not an option. Thor pointed over to a hedge off in the distance. 

“I say, we see which one of us can jump that hedgerow!”

Loki could not stay his tongue. “But…it looks really high…”

Thor smiled at him. “Oh, I’m sure we can do it! We just need a good running start is all! And we can both run really fast!”

He still was not convinced. True, he and his brother could outrun most children their age, but that still did not keep him from thinking that the hedge looked impossible to scale in a single bound. As he followed Thor to the gardens, he felt a bit of dread well up in his stomach. What if he couldn’t do it? What if he caught his foot on a branch and fell right into it? Thor would most likely think it a grand joke. Then the safest bet would be to just go back inside and find a nice book to read. But Thor would laugh at him even worse about that, saying ‘perhaps you are best suited for the books, brother. Leave the battles to me!’ 

Thor always liked pointing out his brother’s weaknesses to him. Although he most certainly wasn’t a weakling he really was no match for his brother. No matter how fast he ran or how much he could lift, Thor could always best him sevenfold. And it seemed that no matter how much he tried he could not close the gap between them. It was true that Loki was far cleverer than Thor and he could talk his way out of a snake’s pit if he so wished but Thor was fond of reminding him that wars were not fought with harsh words. They were won on the battlefield by strong soldiers and mighty warriors and Loki was neither. There were some days that it would cause him so much grief that not even his mother’s warm smile would soothe him. Although the All-Father loved both of his boys, it was obvious to the younger that he saw himself whenever he gazed upon Thor. And even now, as he tromped down to the hedge, Loki could see a younger shadow of Odin smiling at him.

They made it to the hedge, which looked even bigger close up then it did at the pillar. Although Loki was even more skeptical the height did not seem to bother his brother at all. Instead, he gave him a wide smile which Loki responded to with a reluctant grin. 

“See! It’s not that hard! I’m sure we can do it!”

“I don’t know, Thor.” Loki responded. “I still don’t think I can.”

“Of course you can! Here, I’ll go first and show you!”

He then started to walk backwards, taking huge steps with his head twisted back to make sure he wouldn’t run into anything. Loki moved out of the way a bit and watched as Thor stopped a few feet away, giving himself plenty of room to run forward. He bit his lower lip in anticipation as Thor crouched low in a starting position. He stood there for a moment before looking to him and shrugging his shoulders.

“I can’t very well go if you don’t tell me when!”

Blinking, Loki then put up his arm and began to count down from three.

“Three…two…one…go!”

As he threw his arm down, Thor ran full tilt towards the hedge, his blonde hair whipping in the wind behind him and his eyes focused on his target. As he got closer, Loki was sure that he would miss and that he would go crashing right through the bush, catching himself on the branches. When he got even closer a small part of him wished he would. But just as he would sure that he would humiliate himself, Thor gave a flying leap into the air and cleared the hedge, his foot just barely dragging across the top most leaves. He landed perfectly on the other side and stood up with his arms in the air. He shouted in triumph and jumped about, jubilant in his victory over gravity. He then turned to Loki on the other side of the hedge. 

“Your turn brother!”

Loki looked at Thor then the bush and back again. “I don’t know…”

“Come now! It’s not that hard! You’ve just got to know when to jump. You’ll figure it out.”

He was giving him way too much credit. But at this point he was beyond convincing him that it was an ill-conceived idea. And seeing as it hadn’t ended in disaster it gave Loki that small amount of confidence he needed to just do it and get it over with. He walked over to the same spot Thor had, stepping back a bit more to give himself an extra bit of running space. As he looked towards the hedge, he began to tell himself that, really, it didn’t look all that bad. If Thor had cleared it so easily then he surely could. All he had to do was jump and it would be over. With one final deep breath he took off in a dead sprint to the hedge. 

He could do this. He really could! It wasn’t all that high. He’d jumped over much taller bushes before this. He had no idea what he was so worried about to begin with. He would jump this hedge and then he and Thor would go into the royal gardens and pick their fill of berries only to go home in time for dinner. Maybe after this Thor would stop calling him weak. Maybe next time Thor and his friends went off to the lake, they would remember to invite him and not leave him at home with his books and the boring tutor. He could see himself now, jumping into the cool waters on a hot afternoon, laughing and making merry with the others. He was getting closer, figuring out when to jump and feeling so very confident when his legs made the decision before he did.

He tried to right himself but only succeeded in stepping over his own leg. As he felt his ankle move in an unnatural angle, he went up in the air but not nearly as high as he should have. He toppled right into the hedge, his arms going out in front of him to stop his fall. He felt the branches scratch at his palms as he landed face first in the bush, yelping so loud that it bounced off the palace walls. He seemed to fall right into the middle of the shrub as though it had swallowed him whole. And once the initial shock of the fall wore off he began to wish that it had.

He became furious. How could he have not made it over this stupid plant? Thor had done it so effortlessly and here he was, waist-deep in leaves and branches. His hand had begun to bleed a little and his ankle throbbed a bit but he paid them both no mind. No cut was deeper than the one to his ego. He wouldn’t be surprised if Thor started laughing at his fall. He probably looked like a fool, toppling into the bramble like that. He ground his teeth as he waited for the sound of his booming laugh but was surprised when he instead heard concern from him.

“Loki! Loki! Are you alright?”

Thor ran over and helped him up out of the hedge. His face was flush and the sparkle had left his blue eyes, replaced with the slight glisten of tears around the edges. He brushed leaves from Loki’s shoulders and hair and looked him up and down. Although the generosity was well-needed, Loki was far too embarrassed and upset to want anything from him.

“I’m fine. Now can we stop playing these silly games and go inside?”

Thor put his hand on his shoulder. “But you took such a horrible fall. I thought you had really hurt yourself.” 

Loki rolled his eyes. “Really. You’d have thought I’d fallen off the Bifrost, the way you’re talking! I told you that I am quite…”

But he stopped, wincing and hissing from between his teeth. As he had started to stand up, his ankle gave way to an immense pain that he had never felt before. As he was putting weight on it, it buckled and let his leg fall limply to the ground. Thor took hold of his arm, keeping him from crumbling along with it. Loki looked down to see the damage, but it seemed that no matter how he tried, all he accomplished was to cause more pain to shoot up his leg. He cried out as Thor helped him down on the ground.

“Brother! You’re hurt!” he cried in distress. “I know I shouldn’t have made you jump…”

“Enough!” Loki said harshly, pushing him away. “I am alright. I just need to get back…”

He tried to get up again, but his ankle refused him the momentum he needed.

“You can’t stand.” Thor said, keeping his hand on Loki’s shoulder. “Let me carry you.”

“I am not a baby. I can walk myself.” Loki insisted.

“Don’t be silly.” Thor argued softly. “Let me carry you on my back.”

Loki wanted to refuse, but the pain in his ankle and Thor’s pleading look told him that it would do nothing to help him. Sighing, he agreed and waited until Thor turned around to loop his thin arms around his neck and ride him into the palace.

This made him feel even more silly. Not only had he failed in the simple task of jumping a hedge, but he had twisted his ankle. It would be just typical if now he lost the use of his leg or injured it horribly. As he brooded, Thor said nothing. The two walked in silence until they got to the castle. When their mother saw Loki being carried in, she rushed to them and took him immediately to his room. He did not speak the entire time, but kept staring up at the ceiling as though doing so would cause it to fall and bury him beneath the rubble. Anything so as to keep the horrible incident to reach the ears of every soul in Asgard. 

As night fell on the palace, Loki lay in his bed, wide awake and still as angry as ever. When his father had come to visit him earlier, he laughed and patted his head telling him that ‘boys will get such scrapes. They will heal fast.’ However, his ego was not so quick to mend. Although it was hours ago the sting of humiliation still clung to his chest. He hoped Thor was punished for getting him hurt. He hoped father had reprimanded him or sent him to bed without dinner or something horrible like that. He could envision his brother now, in his own bed, crying himself into a troubled, hungry sleep. Just as he was enjoying his imagined punishment for Thor, his voice called out to him softly from the door.

“Loki. Are you asleep?”

His head snapped around to see Thor standing in the crack of the open door, lantern light spilling into the otherwise darkened room. Loki gave him a foul look before turning away from him and looking back up at the ceiling.

“Go away. I need to sleep.”

But he didn’t. Instead, he came in and shut the door behind him and softly made his way to the side of his bed. Loki refused to look at him, his eyes narrow and his mouth shut into a thin line. Thor stood there for a moment before he spoke again in a soft whisper.

“I’m sorry, Loki. I shouldn’t have made you jump.”

“But you did.” Loki snapped at him quietly. “You knew I couldn’t make that jump. But you were too arrogant to listen. You never listen to me. And now look at what happened.”

“I know,” Thor said sadly, looking away for a moment. “But I want to apologize. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt like this.”

Loki scoffed at the apology. “Then what, brother? What did you mean to do? Embarrass me again? Show me how much better you are then me? Prove that you are stronger, faster, and a better jumper than me?”

“No…” Thor began, but Loki cut him off, his voice still a whisper but the words harsh like a scream.

“Don’t lie! You knew what you were doing and you are not sorry. You’re always showing off and I’m the one who ends up the fool! I’m sick of it! I don’t ever want to play with you again.”

He turned his head to see the affect his words had on his brother. He was sure that he would be fuming and that he would storm out of his room in a rage, leaving him alone to sulk. But what he saw was the complete opposite. Thor was crying. It wasn’t a loud, pitiful cry like a baby. It was silent and only tears fell from his deep blue eyes as though someone had poked holes in them and the color was now draining out. Loki stared in amazement as Thor wiped them away with the blade of his palm, only for them to be replaced with more. He had never seen Thor cry before and it was shocking, but not in a good way. It almost made him cry as well.

“You’re right.” Thor finally said, his voice cracking from sadness. “I promise I won’t ever bother you again. I’m sorry.”

Loki sat up on his elbows and watched as more tears fell from Thor’s eyes, his lip quivering slightly as he held back a sob. He now felt horrible. He hadn’t meant to hurt his brother like this. He just wanted to infuriate him as he had done, but this was beyond cruel. Thor blamed himself more than Loki ever did. 

“No!” Loki said to him, trying to fix the situation. “No! I mean…it wasn’t really your fault! I could have said ‘no’. But I… I wanted to show you that…that I could do it too.” 

As the words left his mouth they sounded futile now. How silly he had been to think that he could do it in the first place. Of course Thor was faster and stronger than him! He was the eldest and that was the way of things! There was no changing this. Not even an Asgardian can make people change at will. That was a ridiculous notion.

Thor looked up at him, his face hopeful. “So you’re…you’re not mad at me?”

Loki shook his head furiously. “No! I’m not! I was at first, but anyone would be! I was angry at myself!”

Thor wiped the remaining tears from his face and gave him a half-smile. “I’m glad!”

Then the two began to laugh, quietly so as not to wake anyone. They began to talk of the accident now as though it were a grand jest. Even Loki was laughing at how Thor described his fall. Soon, the two were sitting in Loki’s bed, chatting away as though they had not done so in years. Thor promised his brother that when he and his friends were going to the lake next that they would take him as well. Loki promised Thor that he would not to tell when he pulled a prank on their tutor. As time passed, the brothers grew weary and fell asleep next to each other, Loki’s hand in Thor’s and their slow breathing nearly in sync with one another.

Odin stood behind the door, smiling to himself as his sons dreamed. How funny it was that children could forgive so easily. Especially brothers.


End file.
